Fiona's Flame

by Rachael Herron

  ‘You’d better.’

  Abe kept his arm around her waist until she was seated on the edge of the roof – when had she gotten so thin? – and then went down the ladder before her so he could catch her if she fell. ‘One step at a time. No, slower than that.’

  ‘If I go any slower I’ll stop moving,’ she said crisply. ‘I’m not an invalid, Abe.’

  He nodded, but as he walked with her into the kitchen, he noticed that her head wobbled the slightest bit now as she walked. It bobbed, as though her neck wasn’t strong enough to connect to her body anymore. She sat at the kitchen table at his insistence, while he fixed her a cup of tea and set out a plate of MarieLu biscuits.

  ‘Eat, all right, Ma?’

  ‘Only because you’re a nag,’ she said, and took a small sip and held a cookie in her hand as if weighing it.

  ‘It was foolish to go up there. You know that.’

  ‘God loves children, fools and drunks. Will you go up and finish?’

  Abe sighed and ate a cookie in one bite. When he’d finished chewing, he said, ‘You know I cleaned the gutters two months ago, before the rains started.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, sitting straighter, looking more like herself. ‘I’m sure you did your best. Your father, though, never let a gutter leak.’

  Of course he hadn’t. ‘Fine. I’ll finish it now. Please, for the love of God, don’t get out any power equipment while I’m up there, okay?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, hiding her smile behind her mug of tea. ‘Here I was planning to grab the chain saw and take out that old sycamore in the front.’

  ‘Dad planted that.’

  ‘I was teasing,’ she said gently. ‘I love that tree.’

  Up on the roof, Abe used the same broom she’d brought up with her – how had she managed that? – and poked at the leaves. She’d been wrong, the buildup wasn’t bad. It was normal. In November he’d replaced a couple of gutters that had come apart at the seams, and they were still holding firm.

  Below him, Evelyn Archer walked her three tiny, yappy dogs past the house. She glanced up, and Abe waved.

  ‘Are you a burglar?’ she called, clutching the dogs’ leashes as though they were knives.

  ‘Cat burglar,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  He thought she would laugh, but she didn’t – she hurried away, squinting at the phone in her hand.

  Were they all like this in the neighborhood now? As Abe cleared a section of gutter by hand, he realized he hadn’t spent any real time at the house for years. He drove up from the marina, brought his mother’s groceries and cleared out as soon as she gave him that look, the one that said it was okay for him to go. He hadn’t talked to any of her close neighbors in ages, and now that he thought about it, he couldn’t even remember if he’d seen Mr. Hill in the last twelve months. What if the old painter had passed away? Would his mother have even told him?

  Abe threw more leaves to the ground below and stood, leaning on the broom for a second as he took in the view. The air was still so cool this afternoon that he could see his breath, and he thought again how foolhardy it had been for his mother to be up here. What if she’d fallen and had to lie in the backyard, alone, in the cold? If she hadn’t broken her neck, she could have suffered hypothermia if no one noticed she was missing before nightfall – it had gone to freezing point every night this week.

  And Abe didn’t check on her every day. Most days, sure, but not every single one. He felt shame flood him in a cold wave. What kind of a son was he? What would his father have said? That was going to change, starting now.

  He looked over the Harrisons’ roofline and down to the corner of Main Street and Encinal Avenue. Steam billowed up from Tillie’s roof, and he saw Whitney’s pink frosting-mobile take the turn at the gazebo. From here he couldn’t see the marina, but if he strained he could just hear the seals barking on the pier.

  This roof should feel like home. The house below his feet was the place he was raised. Too bad he only felt comfortable when water was underneath him. His mother would have liked it if he’d moved in across the street, instead of onto the houseboat she hated, if he’d gotten married instead of remaining stubbornly single. Well, he’d tried the getting married thing. It would have helped if Rayna had showed up, instead of breaking his heart in front of the whole town.

  No other girl had seemed worth pursuing since. Worth changing his routine for. Worth changing himself for. Because he knew one thing: all women wanted their men to change. Probably for the better, sure. But not when it came to him. He was fine the way he was.

  But Fiona … She seemed different. She wasn’t the kind of girl he usually noticed. He was a red-blooded American male, after all. If a pretty tourist driving down the coast threw herself at him at the Rite Spot, he usually didn’t complain too much while making his way to her hotel room.

  Fiona, on the other hand. He hadn’t ever really noticed her before. She was a woman, sure. Two arms, two legs. Nice enough face. Rather … forgettable. He knew Fiona was friends with the woman who owned the place where he got his hair cut. Daisy Lane. Fiona had a good laugh – he’d noticed that over the years. She did always seem to be laughing. She drove a kick-ass Alfa Romeo Gran Turismo Veloce. It was bright emerald green, sweet little thing. She ran Fee’s Fill. When Roy had owned the place, Abe’d had to walk inside the station to pay and put up with whatever the locals were going on about inside. Now, he just slid his card, grateful he didn’t have to push past the knitting klatch that was usually taking up space inside on those couches Fiona had put in. Hell, she’d practically made the old gas station into – what did you call them? – a place where girls got manicures. She was smart, he knew that. She’d probably tripled her income, just getting those women to come in and sit and spend money on snacks while their cars got spit-shine detailed. And opening the body-shop? When he’d heard the news from Zeke, Abe had been mildly impressed that a woman would go that road alone. She’d made a name for herself, and now, instead of driving to Half-Moon Bay, locals took their dings and dents to her. He’d seen what she’d done to Zeke’s Capri. She was good, he’d give her that. But besides looking at the many cosmetic imperfections on the body of his beloved old International and deciding they didn’t matter, he hadn’t given her profession another thought.

  Now he wondered. She was small-boned. Practically delicate. How did she get the torque to force big pieces of sheet metal to do her bidding? That kid Stephen Lu she had working for her wasn’t much bigger. How did she cut and lift and fix?

  And why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about her? He’d asked her out on a date, for Chrissakes, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. Or the last time he’d had to do that, thanks to tourists who got off on hitting on harbormasters.

  A gust of cold wind blew under Abe’s jacket, and he was reminded that he had one more section of the roof to get to. As he moved to the far north line, he felt a shingle below his foot give spongily.

  ‘Shit.’

  His shoe plunged through the wood, and he stumbled. His legs twisted, his right foot still stuck under the broken shingles, and he landed on his knees, then his hands, sprawling his way toward the edge. For one terrifying second, Abe was sure he was going to be the one broken into pieces in the backyard, that his mother would find him in the morning, his face covered in frost, bleeding out from a compound fracture.

  But his stuck boot caught him. Damn, that would hurt tomorrow. As he twisted his way out, he could feel the swelling start. His heart thumped uncomfortably, and he hoped that his mother hadn’t heard the ruckus.

  Below, a siren whooped. He stood, gingerly, and peered over the edge. Officer Moss had pulled up to the house, and without getting out of his patrol car, rolled down his window and waved.

  ‘Got a call about a burglar,’ he yelled.

  ‘Evelyn Archer needs glasses, John. You know that,’ said Abe.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ John lifted his hand in salute, and cruised s
lowly away.

  Sure. The cops checked on him when he was on the roof. Where were they when his mother was up here?

  In the kitchen, his mother was knitting.

  ‘You’re done?’ she asked. ‘Did you get it all?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Abe pulled out a bag of frozen peas and sat, propping his foot on the opposite chair.

  ‘That was you I heard. You fell.’

  ‘That roof has had it. I’ve been telling you for three years, we need a new one.’

  ‘Your father put that roof on. It’s perfectly good.’

  That was their whole problem, Abe realized. Neither of them wanted to change a thing, even when it was called for. ‘My foot went through it. Your bedroom is gonna leak like a crab pot if I don’t fix it fast.’ Abe looked around the kitchen, taking in the pale yellow walls that used to be bright, the browned ceiling over the old stove, the sagging cabinet door below the sink. The photograph on the wall of Conway on his boat, his hand on Abe’s shoulder. Two years before he died. ‘This place is falling apart.’

  With her free needle, his mother rapped the table. ‘I’ll thank you kindly to butt out. My house. My rules.’

  Abe held his tongue, but barely. He needed to start fixing things. ‘That’s some yarn,’ he said.

  His mother used to be a master-knitter. She’d designed Arans that she could have sold for hundreds of dollars but chose to give to people she loved. Now she looked like a child, struggling with the oversized needles.

  ‘Abigail brought it to me. I asked for something fun.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bright red ribbon, it was some kind of crazy novelty yarn. She was using needles thicker than her pinkies, and she still had trouble gripping them. The stitches she made were painfully slow.

  ‘So,’ she said, struggling to keep the last stitch on the huge needle long enough to knit it off. ‘Sunday?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  She shook her head. ‘Every year I worry you’ll forget.’

  Forget his father’s deathiversary? As if he could. ‘The city’s taking over the lighthouse,’ he said. ‘I mean, the feds are giving it to them, and then the council is going to let it go to some developer. Or tear it down.’ He adjusted the peas on his ankle. No way was he going to the doctor. He’d ice it all night if he had to.

  ‘No.’ Hope’s hands stopped moving, and Abe instantly regretted telling her. But she had to know at some point.

  ‘It’s practically a done deal.’

  ‘Stop it, then.’

  ‘With all my vast political clout?’ His light tone wasn’t convincing and he knew it. ‘They want me to present my preservation idea. I’ve got to figure out how to do that.’

  ‘They’ll make it into something else.’ The needles had fallen into her lap and her face looked frightened. ‘A store, or a coffee shop.’

  He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I’ve heard talk about a hotel, actually. And an amusement park, but I don’t think either of those would get by city council.’ He paused and leaned forward to lift her needles carefully, taking care not to drop a stitch. He placed them on the table. ‘One woman wants to tear the whole thing down and put in a public park. I could see people liking that.’

  ‘Abe. Think about your father. We can’t let it go, not the lighthouse. Think of him.’

  ‘Yeah, Ma.’ He took another cookie that he knew he wouldn’t be able to eat. ‘That’s all I ever do.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I dreamed I lived in a yarn store. Then I woke up and realized it was true. – E. C.

  Fiona’s mother had bought Breakfast at Tiffany’s as soon as it came out on Betamax, again on VHS. Most of the time Fiona was growing up, the movie had been playing in the background. If it wasn’t, then the Mancini album was on the stereo. The look on Audrey Hepburn’s face when she entered the jewelry store on 5th Avenue? Fiona knew – she could feel it – that her own face went the exact same way when she finished the half-hour’s drive down the long, winding highway, through broccoli fields surrounded by sand dunes and dirt roads, and she finally thumped over the one-way metal spikes at the entrance to U-Pick. Thank God the front leather bucket seats of her Alfa Romeo GT were wide enough that Abe wasn’t within easy touching distance.

  If she’d had to brush his arm in order to shift gear … well, it would have been a long ride to be attempting to breathe like a normal person.

  Fiona was bringing him to her safe place. The place she sunk into herself and wandered, quietly, sometimes for hours. It had started out as an unreasonable challenge in her mind – she could take him to U-Pick and he’d no doubt be disappointing, and she’d quickly get over her crush.

  But he hadn’t uttered a word of complaint since she’d picked him up as agreed in front of Tillie’s. He’d thrown a tool belt onto the backseat.

  ‘You brought tools?’

  ‘I figured you’d have yours.’

  Of course she did. Her tool belt was in the trunk.

  Damn. Him tossing that heavy belt into her car was maybe the hottest thing she’d ever seen.

  Abe had been content to just sit next to her and watch the countryside unrolling outside his window. ‘Nice day,’ he’d said once, and she’d agreed, still feeling tongue-tied, loath to spit out a nonsense word just because she was nervous.

  It was one of the first mild days, the promise of spring floating through the sweetly tinged air, the jasmine growing on farm fences just starting to bloom. ‘Gorgeous,’ he’d said as they passed a windmill standing proudly in front of a vineyard, the vines black and barren, wild yellow mustard just beginning to bloom at the top edges.

  And he’d sounded like he meant it.

  At the gate Dorito, the owner – perpetually clad in extra-short jean shorts and t-shirts decorated with tractor logos – unlocked the gate for them. Dorito knew every single car that got hauled in. In the late afternoon, once the daily scrap-haulers had left, he wandered the site and ran his hands across the bumpers of the old Datsun Zs whose engines had rusted right through, his big, friendly pit bull Nails trotting at his side. He made itemized lists of everything that might be salvageable from the Hondas that had been stolen in Pacifica, joy-ridden down the coast, and burned in Santa Cruz. He loved nothing more than old VW buses whose seats could be yanked out and sold.

  Now, as Dorito came toward them scratching his head with satisfaction as though he’d just woken up, Fiona glanced at Abe. He had a small smile on his face. A nice smile. He looked happy.

  ‘Greetings and salutations!’ Dorito doffed his rusty-orange baseball cap. ‘It has been altogether too long since our last communion. What brings you to these humble parts?’

  Fiona grinned. Dorito spent a lot of time alone in the booth, waiting for drop-offs, reading old Dover reprints of Shakespeare plays. He often said that whatever a man couldn’t find in the Bard wasn’t worth the time spent searching, and Fiona chose to trust him on that point.

  ‘Just looking today,’ she said.

  Abe leaned closer to her so he could peer out her rolled-down window. ‘Howdy.’

  ‘This is Abe Atwell, the Cypress Hollow harbormaster.’

  ‘You run that craft with the blue bow, is that not correct, good sir?’

  At that point, Fiona knew Abe could do one of two things. He could mockingly match Dorito’s tone with an Olde English rejoinder, or he could laugh and not know what to say. When she’d first met Dorito, she’d done the latter.

  Abe, however, simply answered with, ‘I do. You should come aboard some time, and we’ll go whale-watching. Or fishing. At your pleasure.’

  Dorito looked delighted, a grin splitting his weather-beaten face like a knife split old leather. ‘I’d like that very much, though a landlubber I be on most days the sun chooses to rise.’

  ‘You’d be very welcome. I can always use a capable pair of hands when it comes to dealing with tourists. Fiona here, she was better than most the other day. She threw herself off the side of the boat after a kid who almost went diving fo
r pearls.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Dorito, with an admiring look, ‘I cannot say I’m surprised by that confession.’

  Fiona put the Alfa Romeo in gear. ‘Okay, we’ll park up by Nails’s kennel, okay? I want to look at the Mustangs. Maybe revisit that Benz.’

  ‘You will be pleased by our recent procurement of a small fleet of older Hondas. West of the Fiats.’

  She nodded. The antennae of Hondas were pliable, easy to use for her favorite wide-hoop earrings.

  The scrapyard was surprisingly organized for what it was. Cars were arranged meticulously by first make, then model, then year. Wide rows led to narrower ones, and when Fiona was inside the very depths of the yard, she sometimes looked up at the cars stacked around her and felt as though she were in Star Wars, the compacter about to crush her at any moment. Instead of being a scary thought, it was exhilarating. How fast could she climb? Would she get over the metal, scaling it like a rock-climber took a steep cliff-face? Or would she remain at the bottom, being crushed from the feet up by the metal that already seemed like it made up her blood and bones?

  ‘You love being here,’ Abe said as they turned down one of the narrower alleys. The cars were stacked low here, one and two deep. Still easy to find fenders that could be stripped, beaten and shined into perfect submission. Or better, metal that she could snip, cut, and make beautiful.

  Fiona nodded, not looking over her shoulder. ‘This way. You’ve really never been here?’

  ‘I’m more likely to go to the boating scrapyard in Santa Cruz.’

  Fiona felt a prickle of excitement. ‘Oooh. I wonder what I’d find there?’

  Abe laughed, a deep rumble. ‘What are we looking for today?’

  ‘We’ll know it when we see it.’

  ‘How?’

  She grinned and ignored him. Here. It was here somewhere.

  ‘Not far now.’

  Years ago, Dorito had made a steep ramp out of some two-by-fours, and in one harrowing attempt had pulled his favorite, dead, ’64 Mustang up to the top of a ten-foot platform using a winch and a rickety old side lift crane. Now the gorgeous blue beast was the marker of where the yard suddenly changed. In front of the ’Stang, closest to the entrance, Dorito piled the more boring cars. Hondas, Nissans, Toyotas. Out there it was easier for the junkyard scrappers to get what they needed quickly. Back here, on the other side of the Mustang, Dorito carefully placed the classic cars.